Friday, March 20, 2015

Resisting
racism

Racism
is so deeply entrenched in our culture that few, if any, whites can
honestly say that they never catch themselves thinking racist
thoughts. It behooves all white Americans to continue struggling
against the profound hold racism has on our attitudes.

But
it is also important to understand that many institutional injustices
need to be confronted.

I
mentioned in a previous blog that using
and selling marijuana
are as common among white young
people
as they are among young blacks but, by and large, only the black
young men end up in prison. Wildly unfair law enforcement practices
need to be targeted if we are going to reduce racial injustice.

Wealth
and income have a great deal to do with who ends up in prison and who
does not. It is completely unacceptable that in a nation which prides
itself on adhering to the rule of law, poverty automatically
increases one's likelihood of ending up in prison. An adequately
financed and staffed legal defense service needs to be run by various
government agencies in order to reduce racial injustice.

In
many cities neighborhoods inhabited primarily by persons of color
have the worst public transportation. At the same time more people in
those neighborhoods cannot afford to maintain reliable automobiles
and are therefore dependent on efficient public transportation to go
to their jobs. Planning public transportation so as to enable the
people most in need of it to get to work, is an important priority in
the face of racial inequalities.

In
New York City rent-controlled public housing has more building code
violations, such as leaking water pipes, than so-called "market
value" housing. People with low incomes, many of the persons of
color, are not adequately protected by the cities code inspection
and enforcement department.

Many
other cities have similar experiences: housing in poor neighborhoods
is poorly inspected. Building codes are not enforced against
landlords in those neighborhoods.

“Black
children, a new study shows, are seven times more likely than other
children to grow up in the worst neighborhoods in the country. If
they are stuck in the poorest neighborhoods from age 1 to 17, only 76
percent will graduate by age 20, compared to 96 percent of black
children in affluent neighborhoods.

Of course, you don't have to be
black to suffer from bad surroundings. Among non-black youth, 87
percent graduate from high school if they grow up in the poorest
neighborhoods, compared to 95 percent from affluent neighborhoods.

The longer children spend in bad
neighborhoods, the worse their chances of graduating from high
school, researchers found.”
(http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/poor-neighborhoods-mean-fewer-high-school-grads-37)

These
residential differences and the resultant educational deficits for
children growing up in poor neighborhood is directly reflected in
differences in the median income between White and Black families.
For every dollar earned by a White family, a Black family brings home
60 cents. Lower educational levels of the children growing up in poor
neighborhoods accounts in part for that difference. So does the
assignment of lower paying jobs to Blacks and Hispanics.

One
of the results of all these limitations placed on young black men and
women is that they feel profoundly devalued. Their confidence in
their own abilities is really low. Young Black persons, when given
the opportunity, for instance, to attend a good college are so
intimidated, they sometimes
cannot function.
(http://www.thisamericanlife.org/play_full.php?play=550)

These
observations have several important implications. While it is
important for whites to keep working on enhancing their awareness of
their own racist attitudes, doing so is not enough. There are a
number of clear and blatant injustices that need to end. Only citizen
activism will do that. Blacks and Whites holding hands and singing
“We Shall Overcome” will not do the job.

The
second implication is tactical. It is not helpful to call various
government agents – from police officers to school board members to
code enforcement apartments – "racist." That just makes
everybody really defensive. It is preferable to press for these
different government departments to do their job properly, to enforce
existing law in all communities, to provide first-class schools in
all parts of the city, to enforce building codes against all
landlords, not only the landlords in middle-class communities.

It
is time to stop talking quite so much about racism and to make the
many different changes that are so urgently needed by demanding that
government do its job as mandated by law.